Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the House, has made it clear he doesn’t believe in democracy. Which is easy enough for Johnson, because he’s never experienced it. Johnson ran unopposed in his first election to the Louisiana state Legislature in 2015. Under Louisiana law, he didn’t even have to bother with an election. He just moved into his new office and started writing laws until the next election—where he was also unopposed.
Johnson did have to face the voters when he moved up to the big House barely a year later, but in a solid red district where Republicans outnumber Democrats 2-to-1, that wasn’t really an issue. For Johnson, winning an election has always been as simple as writing his name on a form. And after many other speaker candidates fell by the wayside, Johnson was given the unanimous support of Republicans on his first try. It’s little wonder he believes his every advance has been ordained by God: It’s all fallen on him like manna.
Those gifts to Johnson are certainly no gift to the nation. Johnson isn’t just an election denier—he’s a democracy denier. His history in the House may be incredibly brief, but his history in extremist Christian nationalism goes way back. Even before he was improbably slotted in as the third in line to the presidency, Johnson was a go-to resource for his fellow Republicans when it came to one thing: finding ways to advance the cause of theocracy—and winning.
As MSNBC reports, Johnson’s Christian nationalist track record “isn’t a mystery.” In an effort that goes back decades, Johnson has claimed that Christians are facing discrimination simply for expressing their “Christian viewpoints,” by which he mostly seems to mean that no one should chastise him for hating gay people.
Johnson was the author of an amicus brief in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, where a conservative Supreme Court decided that Christians have the right to deny service to LGBTQ+ customers. But don’t be mistaken: Johnson isn’t concerned about where gay people shop for cakes. He’s concerned that they exist.
He’s argued that the court needs to get back into American bedrooms because he views gay people as a “deviant group” that is “inherently unnatural,” and that all gay relationships are “ultimately harmful.” In an editorial, Johnson declared that gay sex was a matter of “public health” and that “States have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse.” He also called same-sex marriage the “the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”
When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the dark harbinger in 2015, Johnson, who is also a young Earth creationist, wrote an article for Answers in Genesis saying, “Christians should still take advantage of the legal resources God has put at their disposal, including influencing public opinion and elections or going to court.” That has been Johnson’s speciality all along: using the courts to press for asserting the right to attack others under the guise of religious freedom. He even managed to be the “founding dean” of a Christian law school for two years, during which that law school produced no students and was never accredited. But it did keep Johnson employed.
In his article in the creationist magazine, Johnson makes the statement that defines everything he’s put forward before or since, and the thing that makes his elevation to speaker of the House most disturbing. “The US Bill of Rights lists the free exercise of religion as the first freedom,” wrote Johnson, “and all others are built upon it.”
Johnson’s nod to the establishment clause in the First Amendment might be read as a recognition of the separation between church and state. It shouldn’t be. Johnson has made it clear he doesn’t believe in any such thing. Instead, he is convinced—or at least, tries to convince others—that the goal of the Constitution was only to protect the church and prevent the government from making any rule that got in its way.
To make his case, Johnson is not above putting words in the mouths of both Thomas Jefferson and the Danbury Baptist Association to frame this as he wants.
The actual concern that the Danbury Baptists expressed to Jefferson was that people who wanted the government to have more power would tempt the president into writing religious laws and would attack him because he “dares not assume the prerogative of Jehovah and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.”
Johnson flips this argument on its head, giving the church authority to hem in the government as it wants simply by declaring areas of belief. Absolutely nothing that Johnson says is actually in Jefferson’s reply. He also doesn’t mention how Jefferson and James Madison spent years fighting to disestablish an existing state-supported church in Virginia (a fight that other churches joined).
Nautally, when Johnson talks about church, he means his own conservative evangelical interpretation of God’s will—the same will that made him speaker and definitely wants Donald Trump back in the White House by any means necessary. He doesn’t mean mainstream Protestants, or less conservative Catholics, and he certainly doesn’t mean non-Christians.
Because, as he’s made clear again and again, Johnson believes that Christians have an exclusive right to rule the United States. Like fellow Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, Johnson has nothing to show for his time in the House when it comes to legislation. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been trying. As CNN reports, Johnson has put forward a number of extremist bills that have previously failed to go anywhere, including, unsurprisingly, a national version of Florida’s “don’t say gay” law.
But now, Johnson’s extremism will be center stage, and he will mount his attacks with the declared universal allegiance of House Republicans. This is going to make it absolutely essential that Johnson be shown that in America, the only will that matters is the will of the voters.
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Johnson did have to face the voters when he moved up to the big House barely a year later, but in a solid red district where Republicans outnumber Democrats 2-to-1, that wasn’t really an issue. For Johnson, winning an election has always been as simple as writing his name on a form. And after many other speaker candidates fell by the wayside, Johnson was given the unanimous support of Republicans on his first try. It’s little wonder he believes his every advance has been ordained by God: It’s all fallen on him like manna.
Those gifts to Johnson are certainly no gift to the nation. Johnson isn’t just an election denier—he’s a democracy denier. His history in the House may be incredibly brief, but his history in extremist Christian nationalism goes way back. Even before he was improbably slotted in as the third in line to the presidency, Johnson was a go-to resource for his fellow Republicans when it came to one thing: finding ways to advance the cause of theocracy—and winning.
As MSNBC reports, Johnson’s Christian nationalist track record “isn’t a mystery.” In an effort that goes back decades, Johnson has claimed that Christians are facing discrimination simply for expressing their “Christian viewpoints,” by which he mostly seems to mean that no one should chastise him for hating gay people.
Johnson was the author of an amicus brief in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, where a conservative Supreme Court decided that Christians have the right to deny service to LGBTQ+ customers. But don’t be mistaken: Johnson isn’t concerned about where gay people shop for cakes. He’s concerned that they exist.
He’s argued that the court needs to get back into American bedrooms because he views gay people as a “deviant group” that is “inherently unnatural,” and that all gay relationships are “ultimately harmful.” In an editorial, Johnson declared that gay sex was a matter of “public health” and that “States have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse.” He also called same-sex marriage the “the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”
When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the dark harbinger in 2015, Johnson, who is also a young Earth creationist, wrote an article for Answers in Genesis saying, “Christians should still take advantage of the legal resources God has put at their disposal, including influencing public opinion and elections or going to court.” That has been Johnson’s speciality all along: using the courts to press for asserting the right to attack others under the guise of religious freedom. He even managed to be the “founding dean” of a Christian law school for two years, during which that law school produced no students and was never accredited. But it did keep Johnson employed.
In his article in the creationist magazine, Johnson makes the statement that defines everything he’s put forward before or since, and the thing that makes his elevation to speaker of the House most disturbing. “The US Bill of Rights lists the free exercise of religion as the first freedom,” wrote Johnson, “and all others are built upon it.”
Johnson’s nod to the establishment clause in the First Amendment might be read as a recognition of the separation between church and state. It shouldn’t be. Johnson has made it clear he doesn’t believe in any such thing. Instead, he is convinced—or at least, tries to convince others—that the goal of the Constitution was only to protect the church and prevent the government from making any rule that got in its way.
To make his case, Johnson is not above putting words in the mouths of both Thomas Jefferson and the Danbury Baptist Association to frame this as he wants.
The actual concern that the Danbury Baptists expressed to Jefferson was that people who wanted the government to have more power would tempt the president into writing religious laws and would attack him because he “dares not assume the prerogative of Jehovah and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.”
Johnson flips this argument on its head, giving the church authority to hem in the government as it wants simply by declaring areas of belief. Absolutely nothing that Johnson says is actually in Jefferson’s reply. He also doesn’t mention how Jefferson and James Madison spent years fighting to disestablish an existing state-supported church in Virginia (a fight that other churches joined).
Nautally, when Johnson talks about church, he means his own conservative evangelical interpretation of God’s will—the same will that made him speaker and definitely wants Donald Trump back in the White House by any means necessary. He doesn’t mean mainstream Protestants, or less conservative Catholics, and he certainly doesn’t mean non-Christians.
Because, as he’s made clear again and again, Johnson believes that Christians have an exclusive right to rule the United States. Like fellow Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, Johnson has nothing to show for his time in the House when it comes to legislation. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been trying. As CNN reports, Johnson has put forward a number of extremist bills that have previously failed to go anywhere, including, unsurprisingly, a national version of Florida’s “don’t say gay” law.
But now, Johnson’s extremism will be center stage, and he will mount his attacks with the declared universal allegiance of House Republicans. This is going to make it absolutely essential that Johnson be shown that in America, the only will that matters is the will of the voters.
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